BUSINESSMAN PRAISED AS AN ADEPT MENTOR

Without Pat Hyndman’s persistence, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography may never have evolved into a University of California campus.

As part of a four-member committee led by Roger Revelle in the 1950s, Mr. Hyndman leveraged his local business connections and social capital to address the nascent institution’s problems of land and money, said Mary Walshok, a UC San Diego administrator.

“There were huge political and social obstacles he helped navigate,” said Walshok, who wrote a forthcoming book on the history of San Diego.

Mr. Hyndman died March 9 at his home in Encinitas. He was 98. The cause of death was congestive heart failure, said his daughter, Janet Rachel.

Those early efforts at UCSD were just the beginning of Mr. Hyndman’s legacy in San Diego.

After 25 years as the founder and CEO of San Diego-based PHd Corp., a vehicle and equipment leasing business, he took over as CEO of The Executive Committee (now known as Vistage) in 1978. There, he applied his knowledge and experience as a business executive to coach small groups of San Diego CEOs.

“He had a way of working with you, within your context, and leading you to the best answer,” said Mary Searcy Bixby, a charter school executive who was mentored by Mr. Hyndman. “I think nothing gave him more pleasure than to see one of us be successful.”

Mr. Hyndman’s peers described him as an indefatigable optimist who had the ability to see solutions where others could not.

“He could always get past the emotions of the moment, and the smallness of the fears, and always could see the big picture, and always could find the solution,” said friend and colleague Lee Rice. “He really did believe that there always was a solution.”

Several colleagues said Mr. Hyndman’s ability to listen and engage with people contributed to his effectiveness as a mentor.

“He made everybody feel valued and worthy,” Lee said. “He always made you feel like you were teaching him something.”

Patterson Nathan Hyndman was born Dec. 18, 1914, in Pittsburgh, where he grew up and graduated from high school. He attended Pasadena Junior College and eventually earned a degree in business administration from the University of California in 1938.

He served as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army from 1939 to 1940 and continued to support the war effort as a field engineer for Sperry Gyroscope Co. throughout the 1940s.

Mr. Hyndman married Bonnie Hunter in Long Beach in 1940, and the family settled in San Diego in the early 1950s.

In addition to his 26 years of leadership at Vistage, Mr. Hyndman served over the years as a president and board member of the YMCA of San Diego County, chair of United Way of San Diego County, president of Kiwanis Club of San Diego, member of the San Diego County Board of Education, member of the La Mesa-Spring Valley Board of Education, president of the Stein Institute for Research on Aging at the UCSD School of Medicine, and member of the board of trustees at the Scripps Clinic. He also founded Grossmont Bank and served on several local and state government commissions.